The 4th rule of Story Club is...

“When I was a kid…”

“Nope,” I say. 

I’m giving a storytelling class to a room full of MBA students, and the one who was speaking looks at me confused. 

“What do you mean, ‘nope’?”

“That’s not a story.”

“But you’ve only heard a few words, how do you know that??”

“Because it’s impossible to start a story talking about your childhood. You might get to a story at some point, but that beginning isn’t it.”

“I thought I was supposed to start with some context and give some background to the story.”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure? I’ve heard that from more than one person.”

“Listen, people can have different opinions about this stuff, they don't have to agree with me… It’s ok for them to be wrong.”

🤨

“So how do I start a story then?”

“Well, there are only three ways…”

This is why this matters

When you start a story with context, what usually happens is you’ll tell your audience way more than they actually need to know. That would be a waste of time, and most likely it would be boring too.

The danger is that when nothing happens early on, you can throw away those precious seconds where people are still willing to listen to you. That would be catastrophic. 

To avoid that, follow the 4th rule of Story Club: 

Only three ways to start a story - time, place or action. 

• Tell me when it happened (“It’s a few days ago,” “I’m 15,” “Last week”). 

• Tell me where you were (“I’m in the office,” “I’m in history class,” “I just got home”). 

• Tell me what someone is doing (“I turn on my computer,” “The teacher looks at me,” “My daughter starts screaming”). 

Better yet, put two or three of those together and you’ll make it easy for your audience to picture it and start the story right before the interesting stuff happens. 

That’s immediate engagement and a reason to keep paying attention. 

“But Francisco, you didn’t start this story with any of those things!”

I did. I just put them on the third line instead of the first, because starting with dialogue works well in writing. If I were telling it in person, I’d start with a version of the line about giving a class and then do the dialogue. 

Can you break this rule and still pull it off? Sure. All rules can be broken if you’re good enough. 

But most people aren’t 🤭

Start your stories with time, place and action and you’ll have no trouble grabbing your audience’s attention. 

Just make sure that what comes next is worth their while 🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking at a TED-style conference, we can find your idea, book the talk of your dreams and deliver it with impact

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.